• AT HAND: Deuce Lee, The Big Dipper
• LOCATION: Zion NP, UT
• DATES: July 6-13, 2011
• STATS: 8 days/7 nights, 83 miles – 13,200 feet EG

Zion…the holy place, the kingdom of heaven, a place anointed by the Lord, an overcrowded tourist flustercluck. The National Park is a wonder of slot canyons and monoliths, sandstone cliffs and diverse plant and animal life, but it’s also crawling with humanity, trash cans, shuttle exhaust and selfie sticks. Angel’s Landing is perhaps one of Zion’s most famous and crowded attractions and the Eastern trailhead for the Zion Traverse. As you join the Grotto conga line up to the top, swinging your hips in unison with your accidental dance partners, you experience National Park saturation at its peak. Luckily you need only branch away from the tourist trail and head out into the high desert near the top of Angel’s Landing to experience the exact opposite: blissful and uninterrupted solitude.

The traverse passes through incredibly beautiful and varied terrain. The West Rim offers unparalleled vistas and canyon-side walking. The Hop Valley is pasture land with abundant cattle grazing and cowgirls straight out of the Rubber Rose Ranch giddyupping and heeyaawwing along the dusty trails. With water scarce, long carrys are inevitable, and the uncertainty of sources a constant nagging in the background of one’s default setting for self-preservation. Camped out in Wildcat Canyon, sipping questionable water in prudent teaspoon-size portions and watching fractured, silent lightning streak across the sky, is its own form of gospel.

Of consequence: Filtering a trickle of algal bloom contaminated water through a handkerchief; giant gaping heel blisters; Kolob Arch visions; MJ DOA; rattlesnakes as high as a yucca’s eye; riding the devil’s pinion pine into ecstatic infamy.